


a numismatic exhibition

by omphale23



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 11:46:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18260636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23
Summary: We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.—T.S. Eliot





	a numismatic exhibition

Fraser only realized what he wanted when Ray's tickets to Chicago arrived.

He stood at the post office, looking at the envelope to _Ray Kowalski, c/o Benton Fraser, RCMP_ and wanted desperately to rip the envelope open, shred the pages inside, to go home and tell Ray honestly that he hadn't seen them, didn't know that they had arrived.

He didn't. But he wanted, more strongly than he'd wanted anything but Ray himself.

In the end, he compromised. He left the envelope sealed, on Ray's bed, in the hopes that Ray would choose something else. Someone else.

Fraser shouldn’t have hoped, but he did it anyway.

*  
Ray didn't want to change the world. 

He didn't even want to change his neighborhood, not really. He just wanted to put in his time and earn his paycheck and someday retire to play euchre and chess with a bunch of other old dudes, guys who wanted to see their grandkids grow up to wear button-down shirts and ties instead of uniforms.

Ray wanted just that, all the way through the years with Stella and the knowledge that for her, he was the consolation prize, the guy she chose because she needed someone who let her choose something else first, let her work late and be someone on her own. Ray was okay with being less than what Stella really wanted, as long as he still got to come home at night and be the guy she chose.

And the day that he realized that he wasn't that guy, that Stella had picked someone else and just didn't know how to tell him, Ray decided that he didn't want anything at all. All he needed was for people to ignore him, to see someone else behind his face, to be invisible inside his own skin.

Ray didn't want to change the world. Most of the time, he didn't even want to be _in_ the world, let alone make it different.

Ray was so sure that this was what he wanted, that for a long time he didn't even notice that Fraser was changing his mind about it. 

He didn't notice until it was time to leave, and that was just late enough to be too late.

*  
Fraser pondered, while he waited for Ray to come home—to come back from—to arrive. His mother, his father, Victoria, Ray Vecchio. They'd all left, in the end. Whether by choice or by force, Fraser hadn't been enough to keep them.

His father would call it sentimental claptrap, and he'd be right. But Fraser still wanted, maybe, just this once, to be able to know that someone would stay—that _Ray_ would choose him. 

He wanted to be able to make this happen, to hold the tickets in his hands and look at Ray's expression and know that if he asked, if he said the words, he would get what he wanted.

Fraser _wanted_. And that was the problem. That was always the place where it started to fall apart. 

He learned fast, and he learned well. Nothing good ever came of asking.

*  
Ray wasn't stupid. He knew what the envelope meant, knew that Fraser had chosen and this was the end. He knew, but he kicked the woodpile to pieces anyway. He glared at the sky and cursed choices made and lives lost and did it all where Fraser couldn't see, because Ray was furious at the universe but that didn't mean that he was willing to lay more guilt at Fraser's doorstep.

Neither of them asked _what if?_ Not out loud, at least.

Ray wondered, when he saw a hunted look cross Fraser's face at his packed bags, if he'd been wrong to keep his mouth shut. He wondered if Fraser felt that Ray was leaving too much of himself here, would fade away without this, them, him. 

But Fraser shook his head and bit his lip and the look was gone as if it had never been there in the first place. 

*  
For days, the spaces Ray left behind echoed. Fraser shook himself, went back to cutting bread into sandwiches that tasted of pine mulch, ignored the irritated huff from Dief in the corner of the kitchen. Held half-conversations in his head, questions and hesitations and silences. Fraser thought to himself, _finally, this is what madness becomes_.

After a few weeks, he locked the cabin door behind him and went back to sleeping at the outpost. No reason to monopolize valuable housing when there was no one to welcome him home. No reason to take up more space than he needed.

In a few months, Fraser started to feel normal again, the electric anticipation that built up around Ray edging back into dull discomfort as the weather turned bitterly cold. Sounds grew louder. The sun on snow left him momentarily blinded each morning. The scratch of pencil on paper made Fraser’s shoulders itch, and the static of the radio left his eyes watering. He swore that the aurora crackled and pinched behind his skull, turned to Ray to ask him—but no one was there.

Ray’s letters piled up on the table, unopened.

*  
The thing was, Ray was bad at social cues. He noticed what people felt, wasn’t really _confused_ about that. But he didn’t know what to do with what he knew, pretty much ever. So he stayed put and hovered around conversations he didn’t really follow between people he didn’t really know. Stood in the corners of rooms, sometimes, watching the precinct hustle and hum and tried to jump back in. Decided not to bother.

He was, for the first time in ever, totally caught up on paperwork. Ray solved eight cases his first month back, three of them cold, out on his own despite Welsh’s complaints. Started gunning for the precinct record without a partner, thirteen months and counting, only four ER visits and a concussion, which was pretty good for Ray, way fewer than he deserved or had learned to expect. 

He twitched his way through interviews and meetings and stakeouts. He started a lot of sentences and then trailed off, embarrassed, because no one was there to listen. 

And he wrote letters. The first few were nothing special, catching Fraser up on what he missed, news and people, the diner up the street from the Consulate that closed and then became a trendy coffee place with burnt beans. A kid in the park that Ray found a bed for down on Halsted. Frannie’s little surprises. Filler, Ray’s pen moving the way his mouth used to.

But a guy could only cover so many pages with Blackhawks scores and rants about the price of fries before all that was left to say was the truth.

*  
Fraser didn’t notice that the holidays had once again arrived on schedule. He supposed that the sudden influx of colorful envelopes should have been an indication, but he’d been out on patrol for most of the month and chilled and exhausted when he wasn’t. The stack of paper had grown alarmingly unstable by the time he retrieved it, and Fraser considered simply throwing the whole lot away.

Something like guilt at the number of people who took precious time to remind him that he was part of the human race stayed his hand. 

He would have simply set aside the letter, added it to what had become a milk crate of regrets and silence in the back of his closet, but Fraser was distracted by Francesca’s news—he’d need to send congratulations, at least, and maybe that could involve a visit, perhaps he could even—and had torn open the envelope without glancing at the handwriting. 

And once it was open, well. It was one thing to tell himself he didn’t know why Ray was writing, and another entirely to refuse to read pages that crackled in his fist. 

*  
He woke up, head pounding, and found out that yeah, he’d been stupid enough to write what he used to—what he still—what he hadn’t—and then, even stupider, so stupid, how was he so—to put a stamp on it and leave it downstairs for the mailman who for once, damn him, showed up on time, which was just his luck, just so, so, so. Anyway. Ray didn’t wait to hear back. He chased that damn letter all the way across the border, over the continental divide, into Canada, most of the way to the North Pole. Head down, glasses on, overnight bag in his hand, Ray ran himself ragged trying to get ahead of the Canada Post, his brain skimming through plans to sneak it out of Fraser’s cabin, bribe the wolf, threaten the mail pilot with—something. Anything.

He didn’t really think, just like he hadn’t thought when he got plastered and started pouring out his heart into an envelope. But Ray knew that if he didn’t beat that letter to Fraser, what they had wouldn’t survive it. It was a grenade, and Ray had pulled the pin and dropped it into the middle of his only partnership that still counted.

So yeah, Ray was a little tired, a little loopy, maybe not firing on all eight cylinders when he pulled up in front of Fraser’s house and started slapping his hands around looking for the key he’d been carrying like a torch. That’s the only excuse he had for not realizing that something had changed. He was still trying to listen for Fraser without making the squeaky board to the left of the window go off when the door opened and a strange woman was looking up at Ray, politely waiting for him to explain what the hell he was doing on her porch.

He stuttered something about a Mountie and a wrong address and jet lag, and she brightened, told Ray her husband would be back from patrol by sunset. That they were looking forward to their first Christmas together.

Ray felt the world spin out from under him and sat down hard. Well, fell, more like. Tumbled down a crevasse and into the ice.

*  
The letter was shaking, vibrating with Ray’s energy. Or maybe that was Fraser’s hand. Still, he could read well enough, even as the words started to run together and tilt on the page. Ray had been drinking, that much was clear, and Fraser told himself not to—reminded his racing thoughts that it was just the alcohol, inebriation unlocking words that Ray didn’t really believe, wouldn’t have remembered in the morning. Ruthlessly pushed down the hope that began to flutter in his chest with every line. 

Ray hadn’t lied to Fraser in years. Only to himself, and Fraser took small comfort in that. 

Still, some fresh air was advisable. Some time to clear his head, compose a dignified response, Fraser folded up the letter and tucked it gently into his pocket, over his heart. From his blanket under Fraser’s bed, Dief whuffled about avoidance strategies and settled back into sleep.

*  
Ray wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting on the steps, staring at the hole he’d chewed in his glove somewhere over Manitoba. Long enough that Fraser’s—that his—that the woman who wasn’t Ray brought him a cup of tea and wrapped Ray’s fingers around it, mumbling something about a storm brewing. Canadian hospitality, Ray figured. 

She didn’t seem to recognize him, and Ray was suddenly, overwhelmingly grateful. He’d just thank her, sip the tea and catch his breath. Ray could be out of here in just a few minutes, as soon as his heart started beating again and his legs stopped shaking. Fraser would never even know. 

Except for the letter. But when Ray asked about it, all he got was a puzzled look and a comment about how all Fraser’s mail had already been forwarded to the post, which. Made a little less sense than Ray expected, so he just took a gulp of tea—cold, gone cold already—and stared at his boots instead.

*  
As Fraser crunched through the recent snowfall, he kept an eye on the clouds. It wouldn’t do to lose his bearings now, with so much to consider. Almost without his consent, he found himself standing in the clearing where he last saw Ray, watching as a familiar head bowed over a cup and the new constable’s wife—Fraser really needed to learn her name, she’d been in town for weeks, if not months—hovered uncertainly nearby. 

He stopped. 

Everything stopped. And then with a lurch that Fraser felt, more than heard, the world started spinning again.

*  
Ray shook his head, pushed away offers of more tea, a sandwich, a place to sleep. He just wanted to go home. 

As soon as he figured out where that was.

He was so tired, and so cold.

*  
Fraser didn’t run, precisely, although if he were to be perfectly honest he would admit to hastening slightly. Even to a stumble, as he set his heel and jerked to a stop within inches of Ray, who hadn’t even looked up at the sound of snow crunching and Fraser’s boots thudding closer. Surely Ray could hear his heart, skittering in his chest. 

Somehow he wandered through pleasantries with—no, it was gone, he had no idea what her name was. Didn’t care in the slightest, wished the poor woman absent with every fibre of his being that wasn’t dedicated to keeping his eyes from blinking, lest Ray vanish like some sort of frozen mirage. 

The whole time, Fraser willed Ray to look up, to met his eyes, to _see_ him. Them. This.

Ray’s shoulders tensed beneath his jacket. He gently set the cup down on the stair, his head still bowed. Fraser held his breath.

*  
Too late for an anonymous escape, now. 

Ray heard Fraser strolling up, steps familiar and slow as he came back to his—to their—cabin. Heard Fraser hesitate, then pick up the pace, then stumble awkwardly as he realized that Ray sat between him and his—in the way. 

He stared at Fraser’s boots, not his uniform boots but the hiking boots he’d worn all those months ago. One of the laces was broken and knotted back together, and Ray bit his lip, pushed back the question. Maybe Fraser had changed, but Ray was pretty sure that no matter what that tiny fracture meant, this conversation didn’t end well. 

He was bracing himself for what came next when the words filtered through. And sure, Fraser was weird, Fraser was polite and formal, but there was something strange about calling someone you lo—your own w—calling your part—ma’am. Fraser had said ma’am, and he tripped over it, like Ray did when he didn’t know a word, and Fraser never stuttered, Ray didn’t remember everything but that much he knew.

Something was definitely queer. Ray ran through the clues again, like the detective he was supposed to be, and got 2 + 2 = 5, and he was maybe not a math guy but that didn’t add up. Some piece of his stomach started to churn and Ray breathed deep, filling his lungs with ice and sharp air and Fraser’s voice trailed off. 

Slowly, like if he moved too fast he’d lose his balance, Ray pulled himself together and stood.

Fraser stood there, inches away, warm and solid and Ray rocked forward a little, without even meaning to. 

*  
Ray was still staring at the ground, at the grit over snow that substituted for a sidewalk, dark on light like the inverse of stars. Fraser bit his lip, unsure what he needed to say, how to put into words all the lost time, all the longing. Sifted through possibilities for the perfect phrasing that would keep this moment whole and carry it forward. Ray mumbled, almost to himself, “Hey, miss me much?”

He looked up, met Fraser’s eyes for the first time since the last time. And suddenly it all fell together, and Fraser knew his answer. Knew what he wanted, and how to get it. He dug through his coat, pulled out the letter. Held it out like a promise. “Always. Welcome home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I had the first tiny piece of this hiding in my WIP folder (it was supposed to be a gift for Caersmane; there are two more pieces in the folder and maybe they'll someday grow into real live stories!) and then Spuffyduds accidentally reminded me that I love these characters and once upon a time I wrote things, too. 
> 
> And then Sansets read it and told me it wasn't terrible, and so here we all are.


End file.
